M13 Designing Lair (1)

I summarized the initial rules for the implementation of lair in Magic 2013 in this article, but I didn't get into great detail and more importantly, we didn't come up with final answers. Note that a 'final answer' can still be changed until the deadline if we discover a good enough reason to warrant making the change, considering the large ripple effect that will have on other cards. We at least need to agree to what we're doing for now or else different designers will submit (have submitted) different implementations and we're wasting energy designing in different directions.

I would split these into separate threads so that none of them get lost in the shuffle, but they're hopelessly interconnected and it's almost impossible to discuss one without the next. I'll follow up throughout the week with what decisions we've made and what still needs to be sorted out.

What kinds of effects does lair have? The collective intuition was that lair is at it's best as a static ability. "As long as you control a Plains, cardname has/gets..." The reason is the ability becomes relevant as soon as you meet the condition of controlling that type of land which can happen either before or after you cast the lair card. Kird Ape is very rarely a 2/3 on turn one, but no one minds because following your t1 Mountain with a t2 Forest still powers him up. Effects on sorceries and instants as well as enters-the-battlefield effects only get one chance for lair to be relevant, making the lair on them more like a mana-less kicker cost. My playtesting confirmed those versions to be less attractive to players because they force you to make harder decisions and reward emotional sacrifices. Lair effects are static only.

That still leaves a pretty wide array of options. For the commons we have agreed that each ability should be either a power/toughness boost or an evergreen keyword. What about the non-commons? One argument is that in the same way all the commons will use the same effect for each land type, all the non-commons will use those exact same effects. This consistency means that we're only introducing five variations and thus limiting what we're asking the audience to learn. Another argument is that lair effects should all be different outside of common for variety and to allow for more impressive rare lairs. It's a tough call and I'd like your opinion. [1]

What kind of cards does lair go on? Our initial brainstorming showed that lair could appear in some form on any spell (with the possible exception of planeswalker), mechanically speaking. The previous design choice eliminates sorceries and instants from contention, but there is another consideration that does as well. Currently, lair is concepted as a bonus for allowing something to exist in its natural habitat or a habitat it's particularly well suited to. It's easy (and fun) to imagine a Kird Ape swinging happily through the trees or a zombie walking calmly through a firepit only to come out on the other side twice as dangerous. It's a little stranger to imagine a Rod of Power caring about its surroundings. That's why we initially decided that lair would appear only creatures.

Nich has explored lair on auras here on the wiki. I think that if we were to put lair on aura cards, this is very close to the way we'd do it. As I explained yesterday, my plan to hinge this decision based on playtesting was flawed, so we need to make this choice based on high-level design principles. I've stated the popular opinion as I know it, but I'm sure there are other aspects to it and we of course need to hear as many opinions as possible. [2]

Which colors get lair and in what proportion? The initial decision was to put lair in all colors in equal proportion. The reason for that is also one of the reasons we chose lair in the first place: to demonstrate concretely the idea of allied color pairs. By putting Plains Lair and Mountain Lair on two green commons, we're putting it up front and center that green is friendly with white and red. At least more friendly than with blue and black. If we do that equally across each color pair, we're suggesting that each alliance is as strong as each other alliance.

On the other hand, it's extremely unusual for all colors to get a keyword in equal proportion. Cycling and Landcycling appeared nearly equally in Shards block, but not quite. Kicker and multikicker did likewise in Zendikar block as did Phyrexian Mana in New Phyrexia. All of these are fun mechanics with low resonance, and that's a big part of what allows them to fit in so many different places. More flavorful mechanics like Bloodthirst in 2012, Scry in 2011 and Morbid in Innistrad demanded color exclusion.

Where does lair fall in that spectrum? I believe it could be just as universal as the first batch or half-way between there and the second batch. The fact that we've tied the flavor to creatures helps because it's aligned more to a card type than to a color philosophy, which would allow us to keep it universal if we prefer. On the other hand, if we were to align with specific colors, that could make it more flavorful. In Nich's experiment, he removed lair from green and blue because doing so eliminates Plains Lair entirely, which is admittedly not the verbal slam dunk Mountain Lair and the others are. We could also argue that blue and green are the colors that don't care about other land types because green is doing it's own thing and blue thinks it's better than the other colors.

Another possibility using that thematic logic is to remove lair from black because black is the most self-sufficient color (at least in attitude) and wouldn't want to rely on others. Those executions play off the ally-ness of lair, but we could instead play down that aspect in favor of the where-creatures-live aspect. In that scenario, I would keep lair in all colors, but have very few plains lair and island lair creatures but a good deal of forest lair and swamp lair creatures. Do you think lair should appear equally in all colors, skewed, or only in a few? Which ones and—most importantly—why? [3]

How much lair do we use and at what rarity? We've planned on having ten lair cards at common so that we could have one card in each color for each of the allied land types. We've barely discussed how much lair should appear at uncommon and beyond. We have brainstormed more than a few exciting uncommon and rare lair creatures, but if we've got 10 commons and we make just 5 uncommons and 5 rares, for example, that's twenty lair cards in the set. That is a lot for a core set. Is it too much? I honestly don't know. Maybe playtesting will give us a feeling if the theme is being overdone?

If it is a problem, we've got a few options. A fairly obvious one is to limit which colors lair goes in. Another is to remove the reciprocal cycle so that there are only 5 commons with lair. We could then make 5 uncommons which then account for the other direction. As for rares, unless we find something that really wants to be a cycle (like the Titans) I don't think we should be tied to those concerns and just do 2 or 3 or however many really sick rare lairs present themselves. [4]

The last really big question is what abilities to associate with each land type at common (or at all rarities, if we go that route). The initial pentad is plains = lifelink, island = flying, swamp = death touch, mountain = first strike and forest = +1/+2. This has worked for us so far and I'm leaning toward remaining with this configuration, but not nearly so much that we shouldn't discuss it. There's some good banter on this subject in the comments here and scattered across the project.

One concern is that making death touch the swamp lair ability means that we can't put death touch in common green and/or we have much more common death touch than normal. It's been suggested that swamp lair grant intimidate, lifelink (in which case plains would grant either vigilance or first strike [in which case red would grant intimidate]) or +2/+1 (to mirror green). The trouble with intimidate is that it'll be confusing for a swamp to give a blue creature intimidate only to have it be blocked by a black creature. It also feels too similar to island lair's flying since they're both straight-up evasion abilities. We looked at using only P/T modifiers but it doesn't quite work for all five colors. [5]

Note that if were to drop a common cycle and make lair abilities above common all different that there would be no sameness among lair cards at all and the above discussion becomes moot. I'm not suggesting we do that, just pointing out that a lot of these decisions have serious impacts on the others.

Less critical, but worth noting are a few more guidelines:
A card with Lair turned on should be slightly worse than the multicolored equivalent would be since it's easier to cast than that theoretical multicolored doppleganger.

The ability granted is either something the card it's on couldn't normally get (but something a card associated with the lair ability's land type could), or else the card is bigger or cheaper than it would be otherwise (when both colors have access to that ability).

A card with Lair inherently promotes multicolored play and should not also promote monocolored play (via Corrupt-like land-counting or Leonin Skyhunter-like mana requirements). This is a matter of not sending mixed signals. We want the set to support different strategies with different cards, and it's neat when one card can support multiple strategies, but very few players enjoy a card that is clearly meant for two different strategies that are completely at odds with another (like explicitly rewarding a mono-colored deck and a multi-colored deck). Even if they do work and a high level player can figure out how to use them optimally, we don't want 90% of our audience hissing in disgust.

Simpler is better. Some cards, like Black Knight and Serra Angel, are defined by their combination of abilities. That will happen with lair to some extent, and rightly so, but we shouldn't seek it out and in fact should endeavor to avoid "stapled-together" cards with more than one ability "just because it's neat" whenever possible. Particularly at common. There are very few creatures with two keywords (and even fewer with two non-keywords) at common in the last three core sets—and for good reason. See Pasteur's thoughts here.

I numbered each issue I'm asking feedback for so that you can reference them quickly and unambigiously. When making your arguments, please remember the set's goals as you do. They are resonance, accessibility, play value, innovation, nostalgia, and being different from the last three core sets while remaining true to their introductory purpose.

EDIT: In an attempt to address Ben's concern about the flavor or lair, I've created a card functionally identical to Vaportrail Imp that should make more thematic sense. I wanted people to see it in graphical form so that we could better gauge whether it helps a little, a lot or not at all.

I also wanted to label this topic [0] since it wasn't part of the original topic but does warrant discussion.